1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to the art of microelectronic integrated circuits, and more specifically to a microelectronic integrated circuit including a plurality of hexagonal semiconductor "AND" gate devices that can be interconnected using three direction routing based on hexagonal geometry.
2. Description of the Related Art
Microelectronic integrated circuits consist of large numbers of semiconductor devices that are fabricated by layering several different materials on a silicon base or wafer. These devices include logic gates that provide AND, OR, NAND, NOR and other binary logic functions. Each device includes a plurality of pins or terminals that are connected to pins of other devices by electrical interconnect wire networks or nets.
As illustrated in FIG. 1, a conventional microelectronic integrated circuit 10 comprises a substrate 12 on which a large number of semiconductor devices are formed. These devices include large functional macroblocks such as indicated at 14 which may be central processing units, input-output devices or the like. A typical integrated circuit further comprises a large number of smaller devices such as logic gates 16 which are arranged in a generally rectangular pattern in the areas of the substrate 12 that are not occupied by macroblocks.
The logic gates 16 have terminals 18 to provide interconnections to other gates 16 on the substrate 12. Interconnections are made via vertical electrical conductors 20 and horizontal electrical conductors 22 that extend between the terminals 18 of the gates 16 in such a manner as to achieve the interconnections required by the netlist of the integrated circuit 10. It will be noted that only a few of the elements 16, 18, 20 and 22 are designated by reference numerals for clarity of illustration.
In conventional integrated circuit design, the electrical conductors 20 and 22 are formed in vertical and horizontal routing channels (not designated) in a rectilinear (Manhattan) pattern. Thus, only two directions for interconnect routing are provided, although several layers of conductors extending in the two orthogonal directions may be provided to increase the space available for routing.
A goal of routing is to minimize the total wirelength of the interconnects, and also to minimize routing congestion. Achievement of this goal is restricted using conventional rectilinear routing because diagonal connections are not possible. A diagonal path between two terminals is shorter than two rectilinear orthogonal paths that would be required to accomplish the same connection.
Another drawback of conventional rectilinear interconnect routing is its sensitivity to parasitic capacitance. Since many conductors run in the same direction in parallel with each other, adjacent conductors form parasitic capacitances that can create signal crosstalk and other undesirable effects.